In February 1974, Republican President Richard Nixon proposed, in essence, today’s Affordable Care Act. Under Nixon’s plan all but the smallest employers would provide insurance to their workers or pay a penalty, an expanded Medicaid-type program would insure the poor, and subsidies would be provided to low-income individuals and small employers. Sound familiar?

Nixon strongly believed that a national health insurance plan was crucial. In that 1974 State of the Union Address, he declared that “the time is at hand this year to bring comprehensive, high quality health care within the reach of every American”. Actually, this statement is not surprising considering Nixon’s personal history of poverty and family illness. (He lost two brothers to tuberculosis, the illnesses dealing a heavy blow to the family finances, and in fact proposed a national health insurance bill when he arrived in Congress in 1947.) Nixon sounds very much like Obama, when he said in 1974 that he did not want to see “other families of modest means…driven …to bankruptcy because of the inability to handle medical care problems of a catastrophic type”.
However, the “liberal” opposition, spearheaded by the lobbying of the then-powerful AFL-CIO and United Autowokers, proved too much for an administration spending significant energy on defending against the rising tide of the Watergate affair.
Kennedy did begin secret negotiations with the Nixon White House, but he fell prey to the pressures of the unions, as labor leaders wished for a single-payor system which they felt would be rather easily achieved once a Democrat was elected to the presidency in the face of the Watergate scandal. Many felt that Kennedy would be that Democrat, and therefore he had no business throwing a lifeline to the sinking Nixon administration.

But that’s old politics, and I only bring this up to show that Nixon was more Progressive than anything else, as well as help Reich make sure he doesn’t forget crucial details.

It’s also funny that, for a party that likes to pat itself on the back about being pragmatic, they totally blew the opportunity to get the capstone of FDR’s foul Second Bill of Rights in place while they could.

But the real, contemporary point here, Mr. Reich, is that ObamaCare IS a Democrat turd. How many Republican votes were for it? Zip, zero, nada, zilch. In either chamber of Congress.

The Democrats, and their little sycophants, own this. They were all prepared to bask in the glory, set up a permanent Democrat majority, and pulverize the Republican party. But ObamaCare is a river of lies, with headwaters in hell. It was falsely conceived, falsely legislated, falsely adjudicated, falsely reported, falsely coded, and, unexpectedly, enjoyed a false rollout. The nicest thing I have to say about ObamaCare is that albatross was an appropriate flavor choice:
But under no circumstances should the pure, 100% Democrat ownership of this debacle be allowed to slip from the public consciousness.

Sound The Collision Alarm! Yet Another Lefty Switcheroo Is CBDR!: by Smitty For those not ‘in the know’, CBDR … http://t.co/4OOdwdRiV0

scarymatt October 28th, 2013 @ 8:18 am

They love the talking point that this was a Republican plan. Sure, some guys at Heritage proposed something similar, but significantly different. Anyways, if we’re supposed to be bound by the super duper precedent of a couple of guys at a think tank, why aren’t they bound by a titan like FDR who thought the concept of public unions was beyond ludicrous?

tl;dr; Yet another lazy argument from them that a moment’s thought shows to be shallow and wrong, and points to a lack of historical understanding.

Reich is rewriting the Democratic Party Obamacare story to explain its failure, with Single Payer being the new Lost Cause. O Roll, Obamacare, Roll.

The range is not decreasing. Single Payer is going to continue circling to be sure. There are plans to try it in Vermont and, if it works in that small state, good for them. But that approach is not necessarily single payer, as opposed to 50 payers.

However, Obamacare may not be the lost cause the Republican Party and Reich think it is. If the only answer to people coming forward with complaints and things they want to see fixed is that we should repeal the program, that’s not going to seem like a very responsive complaint department.

It may be that Romneycare works in Massachusetts and Obamacare fails nationwide. But perhaps it works in some states and not others. And Single Payer may work in Vermont. The question is, will the Republican Party be smart enough to get out of the way and let that happen?

Kirby old son, Ted was driving an Olds when he drove off the bridge at Chappaquiddick in 1969, drowning Mary Jo Kopechne, a passenger in the aforementioned Olds. Smitty, an old naval type, satirically and sarcastically calls him an ‘admiral’ as that was the closest old Ted ever got to naval service.
(Now he spends all his time in the ‘Lake of Fire’ due in large part to this event. Somehow it’s poetic justice)

Fritz_Katz October 28th, 2013 @ 11:50 am

Romneycare doesn’t even work very well in Massachusetts. Businesses have fired and cut back workers hours to avoid going over the 11-person limit (Obamacare is 50 persons).

I also like “Ersatz Naval Architect” for ol’ Ted. Got to vary the derision.

Freddie Sykes October 28th, 2013 @ 9:41 pm

If single payer is better, why didn’t the Democrats pass single payer?. Obamacare did not get a single Republican vote nor does it contain a single Republican amendment. Is Reich implying that the reason the Democrats didn’t pass single payer is because they did not want to hurt the Republicans’ feelings or something? If you wanted single payer, Bobbie, then blame the Democrats for the fact that you did not get it.